1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to decoding systems and more specifically to optimal usage of power in decoding content streams stored in a secondary storage.
2. Related Art
A content stream contains one or more data streams (a sequence of data units), together representing a desired content. For example, a movie (content) may be represented in the form of multiple streams, with one stream representing successive video frames, another stream representing an audio stream in English and yet another stream representing text or an audio stream in Spanish, etc.
Content streams often need to be decoded. As is well known, decoding generally is the inverse of encoding. In general, a desired/original content in original form is encoded according to an encoding approach to generate encoded content. Encoding is performed typically for reasons such as representing the content in compressed format, for security, etc. The encoded content is then processed based on a decoding approach (which in turn corresponds to the encoding approach used) to recover the content as close as possible to the original content.
Encoded content may be stored in a secondary storage prior to decoding. Secondary storage refers to any non-volatile storage, e.g., a hard disk, a CD-ROM, a pen-drive, etc. Secondary storage can be used for reasons such as merely storing the content for repeated use of the content, for transporting the content to different devices, etc.
Power is consumed when decoding data streams stored on secondary storages. Power may be consumed in operations such as operating the drive electronics that retrieve the data units from the secondary storage, the processor that performs the decoding operation and random access memory (RAM) used by the processor.
It is generally desirable that power be consumed optimally, especially when devices operate from stored battery power. For example, many of the portable devices operate from batteries (provided internal to the devices), and it is generally desirable that power be optimally used when the content is being decoded (e.g., when a movie is played).
In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.